The present invention relates to the delivery of medical services.
More and more people have begun to use electronic data communications--such as electronic mail, or e-mail--as a means of communication with others. Indeed, patients and doctors have begun to communicate in this way. See, for example, "Can't reach your doctor? Try E-mail," U.S. News and World Report, Feb. 13, 1995, p. 82. This is advantageous from the patient perspective because it avoids such phenomena and petty annoyances as long waits in the doctor's waiting room, the risk of picking up infections from other patients, etc. Doctors who use e-mail report that it enables them to, for example, have a chance to think through their responses to patient questions. Moreover, both doctors and patients put the elimination of "telephone tag" high on their lists of the advantage of this type of doctor/patient interaction.
Another advantageous aspect of electronic communication in the medical context is the emergence of various on-line services available to physicians and/or consumers which can help diagnose and recommend treatments for diseases-particularly rare diseases with which the typical family practitioner may not be familiar.
Also known in the prior art is the notion of the "virtual patient record," as described, for example, by David Bennahum in "Docs for Docs," Wired,, March, 1995. Bennahum describes the notion of taking patient records out of paper form and putting them into "mobile bundles of bits that can be easily shipped around the country, from hospital to doctor to pharmacy to insurance company."